


blood's as good an ink as any

by velvetcrowbars



Series: mcgenji week 2017 [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: (mccree voice) Darlin', Blackwatch Era, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Pining, Pre-Slash, Unresolved Romantic Tension, how many names can mccree call genji that aren't his name, touch starved kiddos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-01
Updated: 2017-12-01
Packaged: 2019-02-07 09:40:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12838479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/velvetcrowbars/pseuds/velvetcrowbars
Summary: “Don’t–” It catches. “Don’t look at me like that.”It piques his interest just as much as it stings. “Why not?”“Because,” A pause. Somewhere in the distance, metal collapses on metal, tinging the air with silver. “I feel like I’m dyin’ and–” Another pause. McCree breathes out, shaky. “I don’t trust myself not to say somethin’ I shouldn’t.”





	blood's as good an ink as any

**Author's Note:**

> give mccree's missing arm lore u cowards
> 
> for day 2 i chose "Survival" but then this got away from me and. now idk what it is really. i'm also super late to the party so there's that also LOL
> 
> so.
> 
> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Blackwatch agents aren’t ones to end up with the short end of the stick.

That responsibility falls to the honorable ones, the ones Overwatch holds under their thumb with glorious promises. Genji’s lost track of how many times Lena’s come back with a broken bone, her very existence blurring at the edges, stuck somewhere between present and past. He pretends not to notice Reinhardt’s sweltering burns, scorch lines crisscrossing his arms. Cruel reminders.

Blackwatch’s the clean-up crew, the shadow in the alley, the monster under the drug lord’s bed. He’d caught onto it fast, because despite it all Genji’s always been a quick learner. Nobody’s supposed to see them coming – and they almost never do.

Almost.

Sometimes, all’s well that ends well. Never according to plan, but enough so that they don’t spend the whole night bagging bodies. They can crawl into a transport, collapse against each other and pretend for the few blissful hours back to whatever makeshift base they’re holed up in that the world isn’t crumbling around them. Sometimes, McCree’s fingers nudge the back of his knuckles, blood-caked and tentative. It’s a feeling Genji thought his body had forgotten – something he tries to stamp out when it bubbles through the murk boiling in his veins.

Genji can afford to ignore the way a place where his heart used to be burns, a hollow and aching thing longing for more than brushed fingertips and cut-sharp quips. He can pretend to not look at McCree looking at him. It isn’t important in the end, anyway. They both know it: Genji wasn’t reborn to be a loving thing. Overwatch had made sure of that when they buried a killer somewhere in his insides, a hunger for revenge that ran so deep it’d swallow the rest of him up one day. They both know.

But sometimes, it’s nice to pretend they don’t.

And sometimes there’s that _Almost_ , the 1 time out of 100 – and things go horribly, horribly wrong.

“God fuckin’ _shit_ , mother _fucker_ –”

Genji tears another piece from McCree’s serape, the cloth falling apart easily to his razor-edged fingers. McCree’s still cursing quietly, right hand shaking and unstable over the mess of torn muscle and shredded skin where his left arm had been. He’d been silent at first, blanched white with shock and docile enough to let Genji poke and prod at his arm without so much as a wince.

Despite everything, McCree still hadn’t lost his hat. Genji again contemplated the theory that he’d somehow glued it to his hair.

“ _Shimada–_ ” Reyes’ voice cracks, fizzes out like a doused flame. “ _–ou copy? Do you–_ ”

“Commander?” Genji spares a hand to press it to the shell of his ear which, thanks to Angela, functions as his own built-in communication device. All that answers him is static. In front of him McCree sends out another string of curses so slang-riddled Genji gives up on trying to understand what they mean.

They’re stuck on the far east side of the omnium, near the omnics’ weapon stock house – which is where they’d been when all hell had broken loose. The small team they’d brought with them had scattered, bullets and broken bits of shrapnel alike raining down on them once the secret stash of omnic forces busted in and sprayed down fire. Which is how they’d ended up here: pinned down and hidden with one less collective limb between them, neck deep in jamming signals strong enough to make Genji’s sensitive ears physically recoil.

They’d gotten lucky with their hiding spot at least – a tucked away spot through a busted in wall, an old empty storage unit forgotten on the edge of the omnium. Underneath the scent of blood there’s dust and oil, something vaguely metallic. Genji sniffles. Smells burn now more than they ever would’ve before.

“Hey, partner–” McCree twists his torso, straightening up and instantly regretting it. “You got some kinda plan?” He’s still breathing fast, the shock starting to wear off in earnest and give way to the bone splitting pain beginning just above his elbow.

Genji looks down at what remains of McCree’s dirty black serape in his lap, glances over at the two, tiny first aid packs they’re each required to carry – small and compact enough Genji can hold one in the palm of his hand. They were meant for small things: a handful of stitches, a particularly nasty scratch that won’t cauterize, black eyes. Genji looks down. McCree’s arm is a stitched puppet limb hanging on by only a few threads. Muscles shredded, tendons turned in a twisted U shape. At least he can’t see any bones.

They’d all been taught the barebones of first-aid on some initiative from Commander Morrison to _Make A Safer Blackwatch_ , which is basically an oxymoron, but now Genji’s a little less bitter about it than before. Then again, he’s been staring at the compactable, unlabeled clear bottles for over 10 seconds unsure of what to do, so maybe he should keep the gratitude pending for whether they get out of here alive or not.

He grits his teeth, drops down two biotic fields, and starts working.

“What is that?”

Genji’s breaking the seals on the first two identical bottles, tossing the caps away behind him. He holds up the collar of McCree’s shirt, splattered with blood and most definitely unsanitary – not that it really matters at this point. “Bite.”

McCree stares at the fabric for a second, like he’s seeing it for the first time. “I don’t like where this is going.”

They stare at each other for a second. Genji offers again. After another second and a sound somewhere between a whine and a grunt, McCree bites down, barely missing Genji’s fingers.

“It’s peroxide, I think. It will sting…I think.”

“You _think_?” The collar in his mouth makes the _t_ more of an _f._

Genji deadpans, sarcasm dripping off his mouth. “No. I’m lying.”

“Okay, _fine_ , Dr. Smartass–”

“How do you know I’m not being truthful?”

“Oh god _damn_ it, Genji just _do it_ –”

He does. McCree only blinks a few times, hard, blank-face expression a tell for the blinding kind of pain that sends sparks behind your eyes, dazzling. He does a commendable job of muffling the scream – and the gag probably helps.

Dressing the wound’s a long, messy process. It takes all their collective medical knowledge to figure out a way to wrap it, and it isn’t until the painkillers and biotic fields start doing their work in earnest that Genji can touch his arm at all. They use all of the tight rolled bandages from their kit as well as most of McCree’s poor, dismantled serape, most of it ending up gory pile of rags at Genji’s feet.

He isn’t sure how many hours it takes – or if it’s even been that long at all. Reyes taps in again once or twice, sometimes clear, sometimes all static. Neither of them can send a reply.

At one point, when Genji was sweaty and wrist-deep in blood, their eyes had met through the omnium’s yellow-washed shadows, and they both knew: McCree was going to lose the arm. All Genji could do was salvage the situation long enough to keep him alive.

Genji remembers, when he was younger he’d had the pipedream of being a doctor, another more sophisticated form of family rebellion he’d entertained between lovers, between responsibilities. The memory feels like it belongs to someone else now, but between the blood dripping off his fingers and smell of antiseptic it also feels like he’s gotten a taste of what it might’ve been like, in another life.

Once Genji ties off one of their last clean bandages and sits back, McCree exhales, deep and weary, eyes fluttering shut. Neither of them say anything for a long time.

“Thanks, doc.” McCree says, eventually. “Put it on my tab.”

Genji crawls to lean against the wall next to him and does his best not to collapse. He doesn’t exactly get tired anymore, not physically, anyway. Mentally, his exhaustion is an ocean. Always gnashing, always a ship-wrecker.

He watches McCree’s breathing even out from his peripheral, going slow and steady while Genji can feel the gears of his heart churning in his chest, immeasurable and loud. The hollow of dark shadow beneath his eyes is what sends needles of fear pinpricking across Genji’s skin, cautious and creeping in on him.

Genji doesn’t remember dying. There must’ve been a moment, even one split second of time when his heart stopped beating, the blackness behind his open eyes unlike any he’d ever seen. Darker than calligraphy ink, darker than his mother’s charcoal waterfall hair. Time moves differently there, faster and slower all at once. He doesn’t remember but he wonders if McCree sees a glimpse of it when his eyes close: that gaping, awful yawn. The thought affects him more than he likes.

“McCree.”

It earns him a groan.

“McCree.”

“Genj–” he coughs. “What?”

The words stick in his throat because he doesn’t know what to do with them, how to piece them together to make it sound anything short of _weird_ and _frantic_. As it turns out, McCree’s read on him is good enough that he doesn’t have to.

“Let me sleep, darlin’.”

Genji grimaces, the memory of that eternal blackness curling in on the edges of his vision. “No.”

“Let me sleep, _please_?”

“No.”

“Genji.” McCree opens his eyes and tries to smile with his usual charm but it’s lost around the fact that he looks about to pass out. “Sugar, sweetheart, sun and stars of my goddamn life–”

“This is not negotiable.” Genji bends over to cinch the bandage, a little tighter than necessary. It’d been bothering him. “ _Sweetheart._ ”

McCree winces, biting down a yell between his teeth, letting it come out in a stream of closed mouth curses. “ _Asshole._ ”

“I might have just saved your life.”

There’s a huff that Genji takes to be a laugh. A little bitter. A little enamored. “Yep.” He pops the p on the end. “Angie better watch out. Might be outta a job soon.”

And this – this feels normal. This weird dance they do around each other, close enough to touch but never taking the leap. The things left unsaid pile around them, weight that threatens to break through the floorboards but they’re both stubborn enough not to care. Both a little too frayed and broken at the edges to pretend that stepping so close to the proverbial cliff of _closeness_ isn’t terrifying.

“McCree–”

“I’m just restin’ my eyes. Scout’s honor.”

“That doesn’t mean anything to me.” Genji keeps his focus on the makeshift bandage tied across McCree's torso to hold his arm in place, the bloody pulp of skin and torn muscle already seeping through, a ghastly shade of red. He almost can’t bring himself to look away.

“You’re just gonna have to trust me, then.”

When he doesn’t reply McCree sighs, long and heavy, like it hurts. In all likelihood, it does. Like hell. “I ain’t gonna die, Genji. If anything–” he sucks in a breath with every small movement. “If this don’t do me in, then Angie just might do the job herself.”

“I don’t think Angela’s the one you need to worry about.”

It takes a moment before the realization dawns on McCree’s face with a new, and growing, degree of horror. “Shit.” Then, after another moment. “Ya can’t let her take me, Genji.”

He can’t help but let out a laugh, either at the idea of McCree becoming Moira’s new lab rat or at how earnest his face had been when asking to be spared. “Don’t worry.” When he tries to choke it back down it bubbles up again, persistent. “I won’t.”

“What, am I just that funny lookin’ right now?” He still sounds a little delirious and, with a bit of added alarm, only makes Genji laugh harder.

“You are always funny looking.”

“Aw, sugar, you _wound_ me.”

Then they’re both laughing, tired and hurt but laughing. It peels out in quiet echoes across the walls, a very human sound in a place where it doesn’t quite belong. They laugh until McCree hiccups, a smear of brown-black blood striping across his nose when he scratches at it. Genji pretends not to see the way McCree’s looking at him. He tucks his knees up towards his chin, trying to remember how to breathe.

“It looks good on you, y’know.” McCree says, suddenly.

Genji must look confused, because then he snorts. “You smile with your eyes. Looks good.”

“How could you tell?”

“What? That you’ve got a nice smile?”

“No.” He already feels foolish for asking. “That I was smiling.”

McCree grins, lopsided, a little more like himself with only a layer of pain, like a dark shade of paint. “You’re more transparent than ya think.”

Genji scowls, and that must show, too. McCree’s grinning even harder. “Pouting now?”

“No,” he lies. “And I am not the only transparent one.”

“Never claimed to be anything but.”

And Genji can tell he’s serious now, beneath the nicknames and country vibrato is the flip side of the coin: the sincerity, the weariness. They both know the unspoken agreements between them – and this feeling, right now, sitting between them, is one of them. It’s a small thing, a terrifying thing. There isn’t a word for it and that makes it all so much worse. Whatever it is, whatever _they_ are is just two hands, flesh and marrow, reaching out through the dark. Their fingers barely graze together but the balance is tipping, and tipping fast. Genji swallows loud enough that it seems to ring in his own ears.

“Hey.” McCree’s voice goes raspy, wrought with some unnamable emotion. “Don’t. Not now.”

“Don’t?”

“Don’t–” It catches. “Don’t look at me like that.”

It piques his interest just as much as it stings. “Why not?”

“Because,” A pause. Somewhere in the distance, metal collapses on metal, tinging the air with silver. “I feel like I’m dyin’ and–” Another pause. McCree breathes out, shaky. “I don’t trust myself not to say somethin’ I shouldn’t.”

Genji stills, some wire buried deep in his body short circuiting. It coaxes something out of him, a ball of half hurt, half anticipation that he swallows down until it catches, chokes. He’d had to dig for it – the pieces of his old self that still remained, the ones that could catch McCree by the edges and tug on all the right places. The quick draw kind of humor. The pet names. The smell of cigar smoke to fill the quiet moments. The flirting is one thing. The feelings are another.

Genji can feel it caving in on him, another overwhelming threat to consume him, without warning.

Because at some point since they’d met, Jesse McCree had dug a way into his heart. And now Genji doesn't know what to do.

“Then, say it.” Genji looks up the same moment McCree flicks his eyes to the ground. “If you do not trust yourself to keep it a secret, then say it.”

“I don’t think it’s any secret how I feel ‘bout you.”

If it’s meant to throw Genji off, then it works. “I need–” His mouth turns to sandpaper. “I need you to–” He’s tenses, breathes deep and sets his forehead on his knees. McCree seems to lean harder against the wall with each passing second, closer, until their shoulders touch. It’s warm, almost burning against his exposed skin. Genji feels the press of heat against his temple, the brim of his hat resting against Genji’s hair. He can see McCree from the corner of his vision, eyes shut and brows pulled together. Thinking.

If Genji tilted his head the right way now, he could kiss him. In another time, in another body, maybe he’d have the courage to do it.

When McCree finally does speak it’s low and soft against Genji’s neck, almost a sigh, almost a laugh. “We’re no good at this, are we?”

He almost starts laughing again, because it is funny, in some sad way. “No. We are not.”

“But, y’know what–” McCree’s voice, already a drawl, gets heavier with drowsiness. “I don’t mind. Bein’ bad at somethin’.”

“That is…out of character.”

“Well, see, I don’t mind ‘cause if you’re there then I know I’ll get better at it.” He straightens up, thumps his head back against the wall. Genji already misses the warmth. “You make me better. Make me wanna _be_ better.” 

He can feel his body tensing, coiling up tight like a spring ready to burst forward, bust a getaway. “Oh.” It comes out more a whisper than a word. They let the silence sit between them, uneasy, like standing at the edge of something inescapable.

“McCree.” His name sticks in Genji’s mouth. He wonders, briefly, if the shape of it will mold to his mouth, caught on his tongue forever. “Jesse.”

McCree seems to snap forward, eyes the most clear and focused Genji’d seen them since his arm’d been torn away. The current of pain is still there but there’s something else, something beneath it that kicks at Genji’s flight instincts. He shoves it away to the back of his mind. A problem to deal with later.

“Jesse.” He says it again, despite the alarms ringing in his head, but it feels like a step forward, like a step they should’ve taken a long time ago. “I–”

_“Shimada?”_

They both freeze.

_“McCree? Do either of you copy?”_

For all the amount of comedic timing and McCree’s priceless expression, all Genji can bring himself is do is blink a few times in disbelief and press an unsteady hand to his ear. “Commander?” 

There’s a sigh, heavy on the other end of the line. He can hear the edge of exhaustion in it, of threadbare patience and shotgun shells. “Sorry, boys. We finally broke down the network encryption enough to get through. What’s your position?” 

Genji shifts forward, almost crouching in apprehension, shaking himself back to the present. Omnics. Blackwatch. The arm. 

“Near the storehouse. There’s a series of hallways behind the main room. We found cover in the fourth one from the right.” He pauses. “McCree is injured. Hurry.”

“What’s his condition?”

Genji doesn’t miss the poorly concealed prick of worry – because despite the front, everyone in Blackwatch, and likely Overwatch as well, know where Gabriel Reyes’ soft spot lies.

“Stable.” He doesn’t know if it’s a lie yet or not. “But hurry.”

“Hang in there. We’re coming.” There’s a rush of static, and then the comm goes silent. The air burns like ash in the one lung he has left. 

Genji turns to find McCree still staring at him. After another few seconds he groans, running his only good hand down his face, laughing quietly in defeat. 

“McCree–” 

“It’s enough, alright.” McCree tilts his head, so understanding it makes Genji ache. “Don’t mind waitin’ for the rest.”

He can hear footsteps now, coming closer. His ears are too sharp, a liability in moments he wants to keep quiet, undistracted. He doesn’t have time to do what he wants now – they’d had all the time in the world before but their bubble isn’t going to last much longer. He doesn’t have the time, or the courage but–

When he leans forward and shuts his eyes, he senses McCree start to move away only to stop, stock still when Genji presses his faceplate to the side of his cheek. It isn’t much – hardly anything at all really – but it’s all Genji has to give. A shadow of a kiss.

“Enough?”

The footsteps round the corner and Genji can pick up Reyes’ heavy boots, moving faster once he spots them. McCree still hasn’t looked away, and a small, selfish part of Genji finds himself hoping he won’t, for a long time.

“Always, darlin’.”

**Author's Note:**

> (that mcelroy vine voice) i don't know what a mcgenji is and at this point i'm too afraid to ask
> 
> personal hc that mccree and genji never really..Address their relationship during blackwatch just bc it's too difficult w/ all the shit they've both gone through. just because you love someone doesn't mean you should be together, etc etc. it isn't until after the recall that they get that sweet confession they'd both been waiting for for years. 
> 
> title from [the crooked kind](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsLccI7_MbA) by radical face 
> 
> i'm on [twitter](https://www.twitter.com/kanatatide) & [tunglr](https://www.sogokita.tumblr.om)


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